“The People Are Not Wanting”

A Response to David Broder’s Democracy Derailed

By Mike Gravel, President, Philadelphia Two

 In his book, “Democracy Derailed,” David Broder predicts, “the converging forces of technology and public opinion [will] coalesce in a political movement for a national initiative.” If Mr. Broder is correct, and I believe he is, then he has launched what will become the crucial political debate of this century. But while Broder renders great service in raising this issue, he reaches an erroneous conclusion: He writes that the people cannot be trusted with their own self-governance.

Mr. Broder asserts that initiatives bring “not a government of laws, but laws without government.” He is wrong. As he well knows, the Constitution divides our government into three branches: the legislative, executive and judicial. While citizen law-making via initiatives adds an additional process to the legislative branch, it does not change the legislative function. Nor does it in any way alter the executive or judicial branches of government. Contrary to Broder’s assertion, initiatives do not subvert the “carefully crafted set of checks and balances” in the Constitution. The executive branch continues to execute and enforce the laws enacted by either legislatures or the people. Likewise, the judicial branch continues to adjudicate laws enacted by legislatures or the people, and in that process determines the constitutionality of such laws.

Far from subverting our democracy, the people’s legislative role conforms to the essence of self-government as expressed by the great constitutional scholar, Alexander Meiklejohn: “The citizens of this nation shall make and shall obey their own laws, shall be at once their own subjects and their own masters.” The ballot initiative does not create “an alternate form of government,” as Broder asserts.  America remains very much a nation and a government of laws. How odd that Mr. Broder finds the legislative role of the people alien to the Constitution. It was the People–not the State legislatures–who enacted the Constitution.

Philadelphia II, a non-profit organization I founded a decade ago (and which is discussed – misleadingly – by Mr. Broder), has sponsored the Direct Democracy Initiative (DDI). The DDI is a proposed federal law that would permit the people to enact laws in every government jurisdiction of the U.S. – local, state and federal. It provides deliberative and legislative procedures (well beyond any found in the states that currently have initiative laws) and establishes a ministerial agency (such as are employed by all our elected legislative bodies) to help citizens, assembled with the aid of modern communications technology, to act as a Legislature of the People. The DDI is not designed to undo our present system of representative democracy, only to supplement it (which can be verified by going to, soon to be active, www.philadelphiatwo.org).

Mr. Broder acknowledges problems with our elected representatives. However, he maintains that the “best weapon against the ineffective, the weak and the corrupt is in our hands each Election Day.” If that were so, our problems with representative governments would have faded long ago rather than growing as they are. “The notion that elections assure a responsive government is quaint.” write constitutional scholars Akhil Reed Amar and Alan Hirsch in their groundbreaking book, For the People, What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights. “Elected officials can (and often do) remain in power despite frustrating the wishes of the people.”

 “Power,” Mr. Broder correctly observes “is a dangerous intoxicant.” I would go further and say that power is a corrupting agent and becomes more corrosive over time. It’s not just a matter of money and bribes, or old fashion politics, but the arrogance of power which most damages the polity. The people intuitively know the dangers of power. If anything, the overwhelming number of people who support term-limits for representatives show the uncanny brilliance of the people in recognizing a solution to the serious dangers of power not properly addressed in the system of checks and balances designed into the Constitution. Bear in mind that the Framers were the elites of their day, with little incentive to limit their terms in office. Our revolution from Britain was fought over home rule, not over who would rule at home.

Limiting terms is not, as Broder asserts, a “revolt against representative government” to bring about an end to its law-making power. To the contrary, term limits will maintain representative government, by reforming it. Term limits are not designed to deny the polity the experience and knowledge of dedicated public servants. After public service, term-limited representatives take their valuable experience to other venues of society. For the record, I value my sixteen years of elective service, which included two terms in the United States Senate. I do not disparage those who serve: I know from first-hand experience that they are, by and large, hard working, intelligent public servants. Unfortunately, they are also human beings subject to the temptations that power offers unendingly and in great abundance.

To be sure, the initiative process is not immune from some of the problems that plague the representative legislative process. But Mr. Broder exaggerates the flaws in citizen law-making. He relates a conversation with Representative Mike Gardner of Arizona to show that special interests and money manipulate the initiative process. Rep. Gardner complains that George Soros of New York, and Peter B. Lewis of Cleveland joined John Sperling of Phoenix to finance the medical marijuana initiative in Arizona. Gardner fails to see that these gentlemen, like all Americans, are entitled to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech on any street corner in Arizona or elsewhere. They are entitled to urge people to vote on any initiative. However, the citizens of Arizona are the only ones who can enact an initiative into Arizona law. Arizonians can decide what information and which arguments to credit

The difference between initiative law-making and representative law-making is the degree of openness. Voters know the players in an initiative campaign. Not all the players are visible to the public during the legislative machinations related to enacting laws in representative bodies. It is somewhat disingenuous to criticize the initiative process as being influenced by special interests, when special interest politics is what is wrong with representative governments. 

Contrary to Broder’s assertions, moneyed interests prefer to make financial contributions to legislators and executive branch officials to achieve their ends. Big money only resorts to initiatives when all else fails. And, as the tobacco companies, trial lawyers and insurance interests have learned, it’s easier to place an initiative measure on the ballot than it is to win it.

Broder insists that wealth and special interests “subvert the initiative process.” If that’s the case, who’s responsible? Representative governments have the power necessary to reform the initiative process if they choose to do so. Unfortunately, elected officials are notoriously unwilling to reform their own process much less reform a process that empowers the people and in turn dilutes their power.

The initiative practices that Mr. Broder rightly criticizes in his book are not at all those that the Philadelphia Two Direct Democracy Initiative would establish. He dismisses the recommendations of the California Institute for Government Studies, from which the DDI draws some of its reforms. Broder chose not to examine closely DDI’s procedures. I can assure him they are designed to correct precisely the abuses he describes.

Mr. Broder posits a choice between the “seductive simplicity” of the DDI and James Madison’s sophisticated Constitution. This is a false choice. Philadelphia Two is attempting to advance Mr. Madison’s unfinished work, not negate it. The Constitution fails to provide procedures to permit the people to exercise their sovereign power directly. However, it does not deny the people the right or power to establish those procedures – which is what the Direct Democracy Initiative does.

We call our organization Philadelphia Two because we seek to employ the strategy the Framers used to ratify the Constitution – direct action by the people. Madison’s words, on August 31, 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia tell the story (and belie his anti-populist reputation). A delegate from Maryland complained that the adoption of the federal Constitution would effectively amend Maryland’s Constitution, in which no amending process existed. Madison responded, ”the difficulty in Maryland was no greater than in other States…The people were in fact, the fountain of all power, and by resorting to them, all difficulties were got over. They could alter constitutions as they pleased.”

As Madison’s statement suggests, Mr. Broder’s assertion that “no voice was raised in support of direct democracy” is inaccurate. And Madison was not alone. At the Convention, James Wilson observed, “Representation is made necessary only because it is impossible for the people to act collectively.” Two centuries later, thanks to incredible technological advance, it is no longer impossible. Thus we do well to heed Wilson’s declaration that “all power is originally in the people and should be exercised by them in person, if that could be done with convenience, or even with little difficulty.”

Wilson was a revered scholar and jurist, one of six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790 was largely his work. George Washington appointed him to the original Supreme Court, and some historians regard him as the most learned legal scholar of his generation. Those credentials lend weight to his assertion that “in our governments, the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power remains in the people. As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures; so the people are superior to our constitutions…for the people possess, over our constitutions, control in act, as well as in right.”

Since communications technology and the frustrations Americans have with representative government are coalescing, it would seem wise to guide that force for change into a constructive path that improves and saves representative democracy by expanding direct democracy. James Wilson identified who has final responsibility in our polity: “There is a remedy…for every distemper in government, if the people are not wanting to themselves.” The nascent political movement for a national initiative, shrewdly observed by David Broder, proves the people are not wanting. Nor will the people be deterred by the regrettable misconceptions of Mr. Broder and others.